COMMON POWERUp 2024

For a long time, IT was treated as a cost center in many businesses. Now, your IT team should be a business asset, and should be treated like one from a business perspective. In this session we will examine how to maintain a development staff effectively in a post-pandemic world. Topics covered will include:
• Experience breakdown of a dev team
• Managing turnover as a business risk
• Telecommuting pros/cons
• Staff development
• Managing expectations/shop standards
• Finding talent

Learning Objectives:
1. Better manage an IBM i development staff
2. Manage attrition/turnover as a business risk
3. Find talent

IBM i is an amazing platform for running a business today, and its future is bright – innovative, integrated and incredible! Hear Steve Will, IBM i CTO, talk about the strategy, roadmap and future of IBM i.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn what the direction of IBM i is.
2. See how IBM i is being used in the industry

In today's hyper-competitive world, we're all striving to be the best employees we can be. We want to impress our boss, finish that big project on time and under budget, and earn that big promotion with a hefty raise. If you work in IT, it's very likely you report - directly or indirectly - to your company's CIO, or perhaps CTO. How can we best enhance and leverage that relationship to support your company's IT initiatives, and advance your career?

The first step is to understand your CIO's role. The role of the CIO or CTO may seem mysterious and overwhelming at first, but it's critical for all IT employees to understand the big picture in order to better support your boss, and become a superhero to your CIO!

Learning Objectives:
We'll cover:
- What is your CIO responsible for? We'll discuss the practical elements as well as the strategic decisions of the job
- What does a day in the life of your CIO look like?
- What are the differences between a CIO and CTO?
- Who does your CIO communicate with? Who is he or she responsible to, and for what?
- What pressures does your CIO deal with every day, and from whom?

A comprehensive session on strategies for addressing the challenges associated with tackling technical debt in the IBM i ecosystem. This session explores the impact of technical debt on your system's performance and longevity and provides actionable insights to effectively manage and reduce it.

Key Highlights:

- Understanding Technical Debt
- Identifying Hotspots and Common Areas
- Impact on Performance and Scalability
- Strategies for Debt Reduction
- Building a Future-Ready IBM i

Learning Objectives:
Join this session to
- Gain practical insights into proactively addressing technical debt in your IBM i environment.
- Learn how strategically managing technical debt not only mitigates risks and reduces long-term maintenance costs but also optimizes system performance and ensures the long-term scalability of your IBM i infrastructure.
- Walk away with actionable strategies and implementation tips tailored to your specific IBM i context, contributing to the future-proofing of your system and its adaptability to evolving technological landscapes.

The evolution of work is on every IT leader’s mind, whether it’s in the context of hybrid work, generative AI, or automation. For IBM i teams, though, there’s also the challenge of a shrinking workforce that has deep expertise in IBM i administration and development. The good news is IBM I teams can take advantage of this evolution in a way that not only mitigates the skills shortage business impact but also sets up the organization for success.

Learning Objectives:
In this session, we will discuss what you need to do to take advantage of the trends in the evolution of work, including how to:
• Leverage pipelines to visualize and document your DevOps processes
• Enable 3rd party tried and true tools
• Weave hyper-automation into your every day
• Enable teams to experiment with new tech and IT trends like AI
• Simplify a move to the cloud

What are your career goals? Sure, we're all great with technology, but to continue growing in our careers requires that we do the unthinkable... we actually have to TALK to each other. And even worse... we have to TALK to the business people in our companies! Why? WHY? Why would we possibly want to TALK to PEOPLE? The answer to that question is that today more than ever, technology IS the business. So it makes sense that IT can help or hurt a business more than ever. It's critical that we align our IT efforts, goals, and strategies with those of the business - and all of that requires good communication. Would you like to have a seat at the table, to be taken seriously as a businessperson, and to have a voice in the decisions our companies make? Then attend this session to partner with your business and communicate for success.

Learning Objectives:
During this session, you'll learn the business and communications skills needed to truly partner with the business and elevate your career. These will include:
1. Speaking the language of the business
2. Thinking like a businessman
3. Demonstrating strong leadership
4. Selling fellow business leaders on the value proposition of IT investments
5. Always being prepared
6. Earning influence
7. Preparing for and navigating board meetings
8. Difficult conversations
9. Always keeping your cool
10. Aligning IT with business goals